by Randy Shaw on September 14, 2026 (BeyondChron.org)
YIMBY’s Should Support Affordable Housing
Most San Franciscans support more affordable housing. So why are SF YIMBY and the San Francisco Democratic Party opposing Prop I, the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act? The Act will bring roughly $100 million for housing programs. The funds come from a voter-approved transfer tax hike in 2020 on real estate worth more than $10 million. Although Prop I’s clear intent was to fund affordable housing, the city has spent most of the money elsewhere.
Funds targeted to affordable housing were not spent for that goal because the city attorney ruled that a transfer tax hike could not be designated for a specific purpose. Even if voters approved such designation by a 2/3 vote.
To alert voters where the new money would go, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in July 2020 for a resolution stating it was “the Board of Supervisor’s intent to appropriate revenue generated by a November 2020 transfer tax ballot measure to a COVID-19 Rent Resolution and Relief Fund and a Social Housing Program Fund.”
But that didn’t happen. Mayors Breed and Lurie have since redirected Prop I funds to the general fund.
I understand why Mayor Lurie and non-housing groups funded by the city budget would oppose Prop I. What makes no sense is why SF YIMBY opposes the measure.
The core YIMBY value is building housing for all income levels. Many YIMBYs oppose transfer taxes. But Prop I doesn’t impose new taxes. Prop I simply says that 50% of the transfer tax hike revenue from the 2020 Prop I should go to affordable housing rather than the general fund.
Politics Over Policy
The chief reason a group promoting housing for all opposes a ballot measure furthering that goal is likely politics. The prior and current Prop I are most identified with former supervisor Dean Preston. Preston has consistently criticized the YIMBY movement. He has repeatedly claimed that YIMBY’s are a front for developers and care nothing about affordability.
I’ve long disagreed with Preston’s assessment. But SF YIMBY’s formal opposition to Prop I enabled Preston to say I Told You So.
San Francisco’s YIMBY’s are more libertarian than those in other major cities. In Cambridge, Culver City, Portland, Berkeley, Los Angeles New York City, and other cities, YIMBY groups have strongly promoted affordable homes. Open New York played a leading role in the decade-long fight to get affordable senior housing built in an affluent neighborhood at Elizabeth Street Garden.
SF YIMBY’s unhappy with the 2020 transfer tax hike have not tried to repeal it. Instead, they are opposing using the transfer taxes to maximize affordable housing.
It appears SF YIMBYs are guilty of what they often correctly accuse their opponents of doing: robbing thousands of low-income, working and middle-class people of the chance to live in San Francisco. These people deserve more affordable housing opportunities.
Affordability: A Longtime SF Goal
San Francisco has spent decades talking about its affordability crisis.
I moved to the city in July 1979 and immediately joined a citywide rent control and affordable housing campaign (Prop R). The first wave of gentrification had made affordable housing a front-burner issue. It has remained so ever since.
Despite San Francisco’s failure to build enough housing to meet increased demand, most voters want San Francisco to be an economically diverse city, not an elite enclave.
YIMBYs have correctly argued that restrictive zoning laws have made San Francisco less diverse. These laws have banned new apartments in most of the city, particularly in affluent neighborhoods. But new state and local zoning laws give San Francisco the historic opportunity to build the housing for all income levels that it has long needed..
That’s why the YIMBY movement should be embracing Prop I. It gives pro-housing activists their chance to say their own I Told You So to critics of upzoning.
The original Prop I was backed by 57% of voters in 2020. Let’s hope those numbers repeat for the new Prop I in 2026.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.